Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer on the Newsdesk, in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor for online coverage of several Olympic Games, from London 2012 to Pyeongchang 2018. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In the past, Chappell has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, NPR.org won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR, Chappell was part of the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage on major events.

Chappell's work for CNN included editing digital video and producing web stories for SI.com. He also edited and produced stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, Chappell attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is levying a $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo — a record for the agency — as punishment for the banking giant's actions in its mortgage and auto loan businesses.

Wells Fargo's "conduct caused and was likely to cause substantial injury to consumers," the agency said in its filings about the bank.

A gunman shot and killed two sheriff's deputies in a restaurant in Gilchrist County, Fla., on Thursday, in an attack that seems to have come with no warning.

Sgt. Noel Ramirez, 30, and Deputy Taylor Lindsey, 25, were shot through the window. The gunman was later found dead nearby.

Sheriff Bobby Schultz called the two deputies "the best of the best," adding, "They're men of integrity, they're men of loyalty. They're God-fearing, and they loved what they did. And we're very proud of them."

An unconscious woman, a robbery in progress, cars racing on the interstate: All of these incidents led people to call Houston's 911 system — but not for long. These were among thousands of calls that were cut short by an operator who Harris County prosecutors said simply hung up on the callers.

That former operator is Crenshanda Williams, who has been sentenced to 10 days in jail and 18 months of probation on two counts of interfering with an emergency telephone call.

The felony invasion-of-privacy case against Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens can continue, Circuit Judge Rex Burlison ruled in St. Louis on Thursday. Many of Greitens' fellow Republicans have urged him to resign; he has refused.

Burlison announced he would not dismiss the case in response to a motion from Greitens' defense team, reports St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum.

Southwest pilot Tammie Jo Shults is being praised for her cool demeanor after her plane suffered a blown engine — killing one passenger — and she was forced to make a one-engine, emergency landing in Philadelphia with nearly 150 people onboard Tuesday.

In the midst of calamity, passengers on Flight 1380 used their phones to send texts to loved ones and share news of their desperate state.

Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo has reversed its ban on publishing homosexual content, days after announcing the policy. The service, which has nearly 400 million users, drew outrage for lumping gay-themed content in with violent and pornographic material.

"There followed a storm of online criticism of the site," NPR's Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai.

The Rose Acre Farms company is voluntarily recalling 206,749,248 eggs in a total of nine states, saying they "have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella braenderup" — which can sicken healthy adults and have serious and possibly fatal effects for young children and the elderly.

The eggs came from a farm in Hyde County, N.C., and have been labeled under a number of brands, including Coburn Farms, Country Daybreak, the Food Lion store brand, Crystal Farms, Great Value and Sunshine Farms. Some were sold to restaurants, including Waffle House.

A sequence of fights that raged for more than seven hours at a South Carolina prison left seven inmates dead and at least 17 more needing "outside medical attention," the South Carolina Department of Corrections said early Monday.

The incident at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C., "involved multiple inmate on inmate altercations in three housing units," the Department of Corrections said. No prison staff were injured.

A Wichita, Kan., police officer who shot and killed a man in a "swatting" prank that went horribly wrong will not face charges over the incident, officials say. Andrew Finch, 28, died after a bogus 911 call brought police to his home days after Christmas.

Finch's relatives disagree with the decision, saying the police should be held accountable. The officer in question has not been publicly identified.

China's military will hold live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait next week, putting new focus on raised tensions between the U.S. and China. The announcement follows Chinese President Xi Jinping's review of his country's largest-ever navy parade.

Sean Simpson, a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, has spoken in favor of gun control efforts and said he might be open to the idea of carrying a gun in class. Now, he has been arrested after leaving his Glock 9 mm pistol in a bathroom over the weekend.

Facing a potential death penalty over a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and standing to receive $25,000 from his mother's life insurance policy — and possibly much more than that from her estate — Nikolas Cruz wants the money to go to a group named by the victims, his attorneys say.

That news emerged from a recent court hearing about Cruz's finances, which included the question of whether the 19-year-old can afford to hire a lawyer. Cruz has confessed to killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.

A military transport aircraft crashed near Algeria's Boufarik Air Base on Wednesday morning, killing at least 257 people, according to Algeria's defense ministry. The plane came down in an open farm field near the base, the ministry says.

The military says it's not yet sure what caused the crash near its large military airport in northern Algeria, a country in North Africa. An investigation has been ordered.

Facebook users have begun to see whether they're among the 87 million people whose information may have been compromised for use by a political research firm. For some, the news is good: "It doesn't appear your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica."

Employers can't pay women less than men just because they made less at a previous job, a federal appeals court has ruled. The continuing gender pay gap is "an embarrassing reality of our economy," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its opinion.

The court said a woman's prior salary, whether considered on its own or along with other factors, can't be used to justify paying a female employee less than her male counterpart. To do so perpetuates discrimination, the court's majority opinion said.

Belgian cyclist Michael Goolaerts has died after crashing during Sunday's Paris-Roubaix race, a notoriously difficult contest that's nicknamed "The Hell of the North." Goolaerts, 23, died of cardiac arrest, his team said.

Goolaerts was about 93 miles from the finish in the one-day, 257-km (160-mile) race when he crashed into an embankment on a sharp right-hand turn. Video replays showed that he seemed to be the only cyclist in his group who crashed. Medical personnel attended to Goolaerts, and he was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Lille.

Recent models of Ford's F-150 pickup and Expedition SUV are included in a new recall from the Ford Motor Co., which says gear shift problems could lead drivers to think their vehicle is in park, even if that's not the case — and that "unintended vehicle movement" could occur.

The recall covers some 350,000 vehicles made for the 2018 model year that have 10-speed and 6-speed automatic transmissions.

Ford says it is "aware of one reported accident and injury related to this condition."

The Trump administration is laying sanctions on 38 Russian oligarchs, government officials and business entities, citing "the Kremlin's malign agenda" that ranges from malicious online campaigns and efforts to undermine democracy to its actions in eastern Ukraine and Syria.

Seven Russian oligarchs and the 12 companies they own or control are on the new sanctions list. So are 17 senior Russian government officials, along with a government -owned weapons trading company and its subsidiary bank.

The Kremlin is crying foul on Facebook, accusing the social media giant of censorship after it took down more than 200 pages and accounts that were run by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency — the "troll factory" that is under indictment for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

Sixty American diplomats are leaving Russia on Thursday, meeting a deadline set when the Kremlin expelled them in retaliation for the U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats. The tit-for-tat exchange is part of an international row over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in England.

"Three large buses and a minivan departed from the back gate of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow early Thursday morning," Charles Maynes reports for NPR's Newscast unit, "carrying American diplomats, their families, and the occasional family pet."

Citing salmonella concerns, the Food and Drug Administration has issued a mandatory recall for kratom products made by a Las Vegas company — and the federal agency says it's the first time it has ever taken such an action after a company ignored a federal request for a voluntary recall.

China's leaders followed President Trump in taking another step toward a new trade war, announcing a plan to put steep tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. imports. China's proposed 25 percent tariffs would target a wide range of American products, from soybeans and whiskey to airplanes and cars.

"China currently buys about $14 billion worth of American soybeans each year — almost a third of the entire U.S. crop," NPR's Dan Charles reports for our Newscast unit. "Prices for U.S. soybeans tumbled by 3 to 5 percent" on the news, Dan adds.

In a much-watched case, a Michigan agency has approved Nestlé's plan to boost the amount of water it takes from the state. The request attracted a record number of public comments — with 80,945 against and 75 in favor.

It started with a warning email last summer, from a security researcher who told Panera Bread that its website was exposing sensitive customer data. But after the problem went unfixed for months, the researcher went public with proof of the flaw. Another analyst said Panera's response was "half-baked."

ISIS says it was behind a terrorist attack on a Christian family in Quetta, Pakistan, that killed four people one day after Easter Sunday. The relatives had been riding in a rickshaw when motorcycle-riding gunmen opened fire on them.

Three men and a woman died in the attack. A fifth person riding in the rickshaw — a 12-year-old girl — survived and was taken to the hospital, Pakistan's Dawn news agency says.